UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill became the first organization in North Carolina to integrate its Epic EHR with the state's prescription drug monitoring program.
For the integration, which was completed in late June, UNC Health Care's information services division partnered with the IT vendor Appriss Health to deploy the company's PMP Gateway platform. The Gateway enables providers to access the state PDMP, called the NC Controlled Substance Reporting System, through the hospital's Epic EHR with one click.
In the first two weeks after the integration, more than 540 physicians across UNC Health Care used the PDMP to access nearly 3,000 patient reports.
"One-click access is a huge win for our providers," Tracy Parham, RN, CIO of UNC Health Care, said in the health system's July 16 statement. "Now, the process takes seconds to retrieve the patient-specific report directly within Epic."
In CMS' latest Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program proposal released July 12, the agency said it was considering ways to incentivize hospitals to use state PDMPs and integrate those tools with their EHRs.